Life lessons from the very wealthy
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Taxes for the top 2 percent are very likely to go higher
Is this actually true? Obama couldn't get support to rollback tax cuts on the rich - is he really going to be able to increase them now? I believe Republican policy is to cut taxes on the rich (?)
In the United States, the very rich hold most of that wealth in dollars, which are worth increasingly less.
This isn't true either is it? Firstly, don't most of the rich hold their wealth in investments (eg, shares), which might be denominated in US Dollars but are relatively immune to long term changes in value of the dollar? Secondly, (despite all the talk) actually hasn't been any significant inflation in the US. (I'll happily concede that the US dollar has deprecated against other currencies, but that shouldn't effect the domestic purchasing power of the rich that much - even allowing for outsized impact due to imported luxury goods)
Spot on. The Bush tax cuts have only temporarily been extended, and the Democrats have expressed interest in eventually eliminating them for the top bracket only. I assume this is what the article is referring to. We'll see if that actually happens anytime soon. The Republicans certainly aren't going to support it because, as you said, their positions generally involve further cutting income taxes, if anything. Here's a chart that compares a recent Republican proposal to the Bush tax cuts: http://www.offthechartsblog.org/pawlenty%E2%80%99s-high-end-...
Now is a great time to be rich in the US.
To be pedantic - the French and Russian (and many other) revolutions didn't work out great for the rich.
I have issues with the word "absolutely". They had quite a lot of common - both were about overthrowing a system of government based on birthright, and the participants in the Russian revolution certainly tried to learn from the French revolution.
(One could argue that the Russian revolution was actually better for the poor in the short term than the French. Serfdom was immediately abolished, and it got them out of WW1. War had the biggest impact on the poor)
Also, his brother was executed and the family was banished when Lenin was 17 (prior to him reading Marx).
This is so true. Living way below your mean is so important as that's a great way to gain financial independence to have the freedom to pursue what you love to do.
This article is actually good.
- It's good to be the king
- Money doesn't buy happiness, but carefully spent, it can buy several happiness factories.
- Little people don't understand me.
> Money won’t buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem. - Bill Vaughan
Also, Zaphod: If he was asked at this moment where he would like to be he would probably have said he would like to be lying on the beach with at least fifty beautiful women and a small team of experts working out new ways they could be nice to him, which was his usual reply. http://www.otostopcu.org/yazi/h2g2/b2c7.php
On two pages I read I seen nothing like that.
"We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leona_Helmsley#Tax_evasion_conv...
Of course, I don't know any people worth a few billion, only paltry millions.
It really helps to motivate you when you realize that most of your net worth is tied up in the fund:)
Stock options to hot pre IPO companies like Facebook, twitter, etc are very similar. It's hard to leave before all your options vest( and they never do as you always get a new grant each year) as it's always in the back of your mind that the big IPO is just around the corner.
That is the dark side of perks.
Another way to keep people stuck is to pay them too much, much more than they could ever earn elsewhere. They will then rationalize that they are doing it just for the money, which leads them to hate their job, even tho they will not leave (because of the money). Then you see worsening politicking, squabbling, dark humor about "at least it pays well" and general "acting out."
I saw both of these in action at my last real job, at a tech co. you've heard of. The wild parties, the liquor cabinet, the gourmet kitchen, the rooftop deck in TriBeCa, and more importantly, the excessively huge amounts of profit-sharing... it was like geek summer camp, until it turned into a teen drama because of the "poor little rich boys."
I knew I could never work at another place after that, because (in most ways) it was just so great. We were all spoiled rotten.
I read "golden handcuffs" as extending a line of credit to employees to support and _encourage_ living beyond their actual means. This is very very different from being pampered and spoiled as you describe.
"They encourage up-and-comers to spend extravagantly; they extend lines of credit to their rising stars. You need a big house with a jumbo mortgage; you cannot pull up to a business meeting in anything less than the best luxury car. It is part of their corporate culture."
"Golden handcuffs are a system of financial incentives designed to keep an employee from leaving the company. These can include employee stock options that will not vest for several years but are more often contractual obligations to give back lucrative bonuses or other compensation if the employee leaves for another company."
-- Wikipedia
I would like to hear arguments about how a doubled salary, thanks to profit-sharing, does not count as a "system of financial incentives designed to keep an employee from leaving the company."
It is merely the carrot and not the stick.
(Does nobody Google any more?)
This is basically what we'd expect, given that:
a) Folks who become rich are generally pretty darn smart.
b) People who are smart generally have smart parents.
c) The vast majority of smart people are in the comfortable middle class. (Not the poor, since they're smart enough not to be poor, but not the very rich, because statistically there ain't that many of 'em)
Therefore, if you're rich you probably had comfortably middle class parents.
"Many of today’s super-rich started out in the middle and make most of their money through work, not inheritance. Ninety-five years ago, the richest 1 percent of Americans received only 20 percent of their income from paid work; in 2004, that income proportion had tripled, to 60 percent. "
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/the-14-b...
I never want to "work" in an organisation where this is true.